


find you

by etherealaline



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Battle, F/F, First Meetings, Girl Saves Girl, Light Angst, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Seelie Court, What else is new, a little bit of fluff in there too, seelie!helen, the circle are a bunch of assholes, we respect half shadowhunter helen in this house but she's now just a seelie plain and simple okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21737686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherealaline/pseuds/etherealaline
Summary: aline discovers an injured helen in the midst of battle and vows to make her see that all hope is not lost. and it isn't. not at all.
Relationships: Helen Blackthorn/Aline Penhallow
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19
Collections: shadowhunters sapphic ficathon, shadowhunters sapphic library





	find you

**Author's Note:**

> written for the #shsapphicficathon week one prompt "this is not your destruction"
> 
> yes i know i'm incredibly late with this but i'm also incredibly tired pls don't be mean i absolutely Will cry!!

”Aline, they’re already here,” Clary says, not a fraction of hesitance in her voice. ”We’re too late.”

Her statement is soon proven correct by the piercing cry of help that sounds through the air, leaving them both frozen in place for a moment. As Aline looks around, she realizes she should have put the picture together sooner. To the mundane eye, the destroyed flora and fauna wouldn’t be a very alarming sight, but in this forest, such cruel acts of destruction were only carried out by people who didn’t see the seelies as human enough to respect their ideologies. That could only be who they were here to stop: the men of the Circle, determined to wipe out an entire faction of the Downworld.

”We may be late, but not too late,” she says and turns to look at Clary as she pulls out her sword. Her dark eyes are suddenly aflame with determination and the redhead is left with no choice but to stand taller under her burning gaze. ”This is not how this story ends.”

With a shared nod they head off into the thick of the battle they must win.

\--------------------------------------

Mere moments later Aline finds herself kneeling by a wounded seelie on the ground, hoisting her head up in her lap.

“Hey,” she whispers, looking around hastily in an attempt to make sure they won’t be attacked as she tries to rescue the barely conscious seelie. “I’ll help you get out of here.”

A moment that feels like an eternity wrapped in a held breath passes and the seelie shows no sign of hearing what she said. Sooner than she had planned, she retorts to pleading. “Please, look at me. We can help you but only if you help me help you.”

Slowly, she peels her eyes open, visibly struggling with the simple act of it, and groans weakly in response to her words. Aline’s heart clenches, her grip involuntarily tightening on the girl.

“It’s no use,” she croaks out and tries to shake her head, which aline puts an immediate stop to by placing her hand on her cheek.

“Don’t,” Aline says calmly even as her hands shake around the seelie, knowing they only have a few lucky moments before they're both doomed. "You need your strength."

“Strength?" She asks, her eyes slipping closed again. "Strength has gotten us nowhere. This is our destruction."

Aline is barely able to hold herself together as she takes in those words and looks at the girl's weak form in her arms. She can't stand the thought of her being right - right to not have hope.

"This is _not_ your destruction," She insists, blinking away tears. "We will win, I promise you."

\-----------------------------------------

Contrary to what would be ideal, Aline doesn't wake up in her warm bed to the soft caress of sunshine on her cheek the next day. Instead, she wakes up in the most uncomfortable chair to exist to the cold fluorescent lights of the infirmary.

It takes her a while to fully understand her surroundings, an excruciating pain simmering under her skin in several different parts of her body distracting her from taking in much else. When she does continue to assess the situation and notices the girl in the bed next to her, all of the pain somehow migrates somewhere else entirely.

For a moment, she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know if she should even be here, or how to ask Isabelle if the would be okay. All she knows is that she can't continue to live with herself if she made a promise she couldn't keep to a hopeless, beautiful seelie in the middle of a brewing tragedy.

Tentatively, Aline reaches out to brush her fingers over her bruised knuckles, remembering her words about strength getting her people nowhere. She closes her eyes, buries her face in the blanket hanging off the bed - anything to help her forget while she waits for answers.

It is then that the hand under hers slowly turns around and warm fingers are interlocked with hers. She looks up so fast she gets a little dizzy.

"Hi," The seelie speaks, in more of a whisper than anything, and squeezes Aline's hand.

"Hi," She whispers back, utterly dumbfounded, unable to produce words of her own.

"Are you okay?" She asks, a graceful brow furrowed in worry.

"I'm okay, but you-" Aline stops abruptly, looking down at her feet. "I- I promised you we could win and honestly I have no idea if I can keep that promise and I'm so deeply sorry for giving you false hope that- that was never my intention..."

"Hey, hey, no. Look around. We did win. We're all here. We're all going to be okay."

When she turns around and sees the infirmary full of injured seelies being cared for by shadowhunters, she lets out a teary laugh, equal parts relief and disbelief finally breaking the dam.

"I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say that we're eternally grateful for your alliance. Without it, we would be gone," The seelie says, the look in her eyes one of deep fondness.

"That's what we do, uh-" Aline starts until she realizes she doesn't even know the girl's name she saved.

Luckily, she catches on. "Helen," She says with a soft smile. "I'm Helen."

"That's what we do, Helen," Aline responds to her smile, eyes shining. "I'm so relieved you're all here. Alive. Okay."

"Me, too," Helen says quietly, gratitude written all over her fair features. 

A soft silence falls over them when Isabelle comes over to check up on the seelie to assess her injuries better than she could while she was still unconscious. She pulls the sheet aside to reveal a now stitched up gash that stretches across Helen's entire right thigh. Completely involuntarily, Aline grimaces.

"That is somehow worse than I remembered," She breathes out. "I'm so sorry." 

"You did lose a lot of blood, but you would've lost a lot more without Aline thinking on her feet," Isabelle says as she tucks Helen back under the covers, careful not to cause her any unnecessary pain.

At that, Helen smiles a kind of coy smile that catches Aline completely off guard. "If only I had a better recollection of her carrying me here," she says, making Isabelle stop in her tracks and give her a delighted eyebrow raise. "Maybe we need to do that again sometime, Aline?"

"Uh," Aline bites her lip, willing herself to not look away from Helen's glistening eyes even though she can feel herself blushing. "Yeah, I think we can do that, but just- maybe without the threat of extinction and injuries."


End file.
